A Fatal Thaw

by Dana Stabenow

  The team’s lead dog had been restrained by three boys. A fourth had a stick and with it was investigating the dog’s behind. The dog yelped a third time. Kate took half a dozen swift noiseless steps and collared the boy with the stick and the one holding the dog’s hind legs apart. Their heads thumped together with a very satisfying sound, so she did it again. The other two boys cut and ran. “Mutt, fetch!” Mutt bounded forward and knocked the third boy over with a powerful shoulder. She left him to nip at the rapidly retreating behind of the fourth. The third boy, still rolling, bounced off the side of the Roadhouse, jumped to his feet and streaked off.

  “All right,” Kate said, “now just who do we have here?” She twisted them around to see. Bewildered and blubbering, neither was much above ten years old. “Ah. Amos Totemoff. I’ll be sure, next time I see Demetri to tell him I saw his son, and I’ll be sure to tell him what I saw his son doing, too.” She looked at the other boy and said musingly, “Larry? Lyndon? Leonard, that’s it, Leonard Kvasnikof. Stop that bawling this instant.” Her raspy voice cracked like a broken whip. Both boys froze into immobility, feet dangling some inches above the ground. “Who were those other two boys?” Neither spoke, and she wound her fists tighter in their collars and gave them a shake. “Who were they?”

  Still no answer. “Okay,” Kate said, easing her grip so that their toes could touch the ground, “I wouldn’t give two cents for a boy who ratted on a friend anyway. But get this and get it good. I catch either one of you mistreating a dog, or any other animal anywhere in the Park ever again, I’ll blister both your butts until you have to eat standing up for a month. And then I’ll tell your dads, and you may never eat sitting down again. Got that?” She banged their heads together a third time, for insurance, and let them fall into two heaps, faces dazed, too stunned to cry.

  Kate lifted the leader’s tail and didn’t see any blood. She gave him a reassuring thump, led the team around to the front of the building with the rest of the sleds, and reset the anchors.

  Inside, the Roadhouse was filled to overflowing with what at first seemed one large, amorphous crowd, but which upon closer inspection resolved into three distinct groups. In one corner a man read from a Bible, hand upraised to heaven, forefinger pointing the one way. A group of six people in folding chairs lined up before him in two orderly rows.

  “Pastor Bill,” Kate said, nodding.

  “Good to see you, Kate,” the pastor said, and dropped his forefinger to shake her hand. Without missing a beat the forefinger resumed its upright position, and the sermon continued. “And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is—”

  “Beer!” a man yelled from the group of tables shoved together in another corner. Behind the bar Bernie nodded and set up another round. Kate recognized them as mushers and, standing on tiptoe and craning her neck, saw that they were hunched over a topographical map of interior Alaska, covering all the Park from Canada to the Alaska Railroad and Prince William Sound to Fairbanks. One of the mushers looked up, caught her eye and waved. “Hey, Kate.”

  “Hey, Mandy. What’s up?”

  The stocky woman, eyes crinkled at the corners from squinting long distances into setting Arctic suns, gestured at the map. “Working out a route for the Kanuyaq 500.”

  “The Kanuyaq 500? What’s that?”

  “A new race we’re organizing. What?” She turned back. “No, no, no, not that way. You want the route to go right through the Valley of Death and straight up Angqaq Peak? It won’t be much of a race if we get all the dogs killed in an avalanche.” Mandy’s smile faded. “Jesus, just think what ‘Wide World of Sports’ would have to say if we ran a bunch of dogs off Carlson Icefall.”

  “Compared to what they might say if you only ran the mushers off it,” Kate heard a loud voice comment from the next group over, and there was a low laugh, quickly stifled when Mandy glared.

  Kate followed the sound of that voice to a group of matrons sitting around a square piece of cloth. One woman sensed her presence and looked up. “Kate!”

  “Hello, Helen.” She nodded around the circle. “Kathy, Joyce, Darlene, Gladys, Shirley. How are you all?”

  Shirley waved a thick white porcelain mug in her direction. Identical mugs sat on the floor next to each chair. “Pull up a seat! Want an Irish coffee? Bernie!” she bellowed. “Bring Kate an Irish coffee!”

  “No,” Kate said quickly, shaking her head at Bernie. “I can’t, Shirley, I’m driving.”

  “No? Well, hell, Kate.” Shirley, a redhead with pale, freckled skin, grinned up at her. “If you aren’t going to drink, sit down and sew a patch or two.”

  “Love to,” Kate said, “if you’re sure you’re up to it. I remember last time I sewed the quilt to my jeans and it took you guys fifteen minutes to cut me loose.”

  “You were a little nervous,” Gladys, a plump, motherly woman with dark hair, allowed.

  “All those seam rippers that close to my lap, you bet I was nervous,” Kate retorted. The circle of women cackled reminiscently. Kate looked at the cloth, trying to identify the pattern. “What do you call this one?”

  “The wedding ring.” Darlene winked at her. “Play your cards right, Kate, and we’ll give it to you for a wedding present.”

  “I have to get married first?”

  “Yup.” All five graying heads nodded solemnly.

  “Then forget it. I can’t get married. Who would Chopper Jim and Dandy Mike have to chase if I did?”

  Delighted, the circle cackled again. Kate waved a general good-bye and stepped to the long bar at the back of the room. Next to her Mutt reared up, both paws on the bar, panting slightly around an anticipatory tongue. Bernie reached across and scratched behind her ears. “Hey, Mutt, how are you, girl? What’ll it be, the usual?”

  Mutt yipped once. Bernie pulled a package of beef jerky off a stand and ripped it open. Mutt received it delicately between her teeth and returned to ground level.

  Bernie looked at Kate. “Hi, Kate. Coke?”

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  He reached for a nozzle and a glass. “What brings you into town? Kind of early for you; you usually don’t run your snow machine during breakup.” He grinned at her. “Earthquake weather.”

  She rapped her knuckles on the scarred surface of the wooden bar. “Bite your tongue.”

  “Yeah, well, I missed the last big one.”

  “If you’re lucky you’ll miss the next one, too,” Kate said, a little grimly.

  He set the glass on a napkin and slid both over in front of her. Leaning forward on folded arms, he regarded her with a slight smile. He had high cheekbones and a higher forehead accentuated by the hair skinned back from both in a neat pony tail as long as Kate’s. His eyes were brown and deeply set, their expression always tranquil. Bernie projected a kind of monastic serenity, which, with a wife and seven children in the rambling house fifty yards from the Roadhouse, was a neat trick, now that Kate thought of it. “How’s Enid?”

  “Fine.”

  “And the kids?”

  “We got the Class C state championship this year, did you hear?” he said proudly.

  “No, Bernie,” Kate said in a patient voice, “I meant your kids. Your very own children. Of Enid born,” she elaborated when he looked confused. “Remember? Your wife? My cousin?”

  His face cleared. “Oh yeah. Them. They’re fine.” He thought. “Sammy’ll be old enough to try out for the junior varsity team next year.”

  “How nice for you both,” Kate murmured. “When do the playoffs begin?”

  “Thursday afternoon,” he said, his face reanimating.

  “Have we got a shot?”

  “We always have a shot,” he said loftily. “I been drilling the starting five in free throws since September, Eknaty Kvasnikof’s shooting seventy-two percent and the other four aren’t much below sixty.” He waggled a finger at her. “And remember—”

  “Free throws win ball games,” she chanted with him and laughed. “Free
throws win ball games,” was Bernie’s mantra. She took a sip. “Where were you, Saturday before last?”

  “When McAniff was on his spree?” She nodded. “Right here, along with about half the town, which was probably a good thing.”

  “Typical Saturday morning,” she suggested, and he nodded agreement.

  “Crazy bastard.” he said. “He must have known he’d get caught.”

  “I think he was looking forward to it.”

  Bernie shook his head. “Crazy sick bastard. I’ll bet he can’t wait for the trial so he can tell us how he planned it all.”

  Kate’s generous mouth turned down at the corners. “Safe bet. Jack Morgan told me his lawyers are planning on pleading guilty by reason of insanity.”

  “So?”

  She set her glass down. “They’re saying he’s insane because he had a bad case of cabin fever brought on by eating too much junk food.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “Right,” he said at last. “I’ll remember to pig out on caramel corn first, the next time I want to shoot somebody and get away with it.”

  “Bernie,” she said and paused. What could he know about any of it, serving up beer and wine coolers across a bar twenty-seven miles downriver from Niniltna and the events of that terrible day? “Did you know him?” she asked finally.

  “McAniff?”

  “Umm.”

  He shrugged. “Not really. I knew him enough to call him by name.”

  “So he came in here?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “What’d he drink?”

  “Beer, mostly. Beer and a shot, every now and then.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Quiet. Kept to himself.”

  “Did he run a tab?”

  “Always paid in cash.” He eyed her, curious. “Why all the questions? You caught him, right? He’s in jail, they got the rifle, they got the bodies, he’s bragging he did it on every TV and radio station that’ll hold a mike still long enough for him to talk into it. Why do you want to know about him?”

  Why did she? Perhaps because she couldn’t forget the sight of McAniff lying on the hard-packed snow, weeping when he found himself drooling blood. Maybe she just wanted confirmation of her own actions, validation of the rightness of her cause. “He asked me if I had anything to eat,” she said. “Like he was a neighbor who’d been out doing a little hunting and had lost track of time and missed his lunch.”

  “He would have killed you,” Bernie said. “I mean, he had the rifle up and everything, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You stopped him.”

  “Mutt did.” Hearing her name, Mutt looked up and beat her tail on the floor, chewing on the last piece of jerky.

  “Whatever. Somebody had to, Kate.” He shot her a keen glance. “You’re not going all soft on me, are you? He had to be stopped, Kate. It’s a shame—” He stopped and began studiously polishing a glass.

  “I know, it’s a shame I didn’t shoot him when I had the chance.” She blew out a sigh and with a firm hand directed the conversation into a useful channel. “Lisa Getty was one of the victims.”

  “Yeah. I’ll miss her.”

  She felt a pang of dismay. “Bernie. Not you, too.”

  “Well, she did dress up the place.” He pursed his lips as if about to whistle. “Did she ever. Just walking in. she dressed up the place. She brought in the business, too. I think half the guys who came here, came here hoping Lisa’d be here that night. Wherever the biggest bunch of men were in the room, you could bet Lisa’d be in the middle of them. What a honeypot.”

  Kate rolled her eyes, and Bernie grinned, his monastic restraint suspended for the duration. “Well, she was.”

  “Lisa interested in anybody in particular?” Kate said, eyes on her glass.

  Bernie snorted. “Sure. Every guy she ever laid eyes on. Old men, middle-aged men, boys.” He reflected. “I think half the team had the hots for her. Eknaty Kvasnikof did odd jobs for the Getty sisters. Since the massacre he’s been dragging around like a whipped pup.” His face darkened. “Better not screw with his free-throw average or I’ll dig the bitch up and burn her at the stake. And I’ll get Pastor Bill to exorcise the remains.”

  Kate took another sip. “Lisa interested in anyone in particular lately?”

  There was a long pause, and she looked up to see Bernie watching her. “Why?”

  “Bobby tells me half the Park’s gone into mourning for Lisa Getty.”

  “The male half, sure enough,” Bernie agreed. “The female half, that’s another story. They’re thinking of catering a party.” He reached for a glass and began polishing it with a rag, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You grew up with Lisa, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “And Lottie.”

  “Louie.” He shook his head. “They ruined a hell of a man when they cut the balls off her.”

  “Bernie.”

  “Sorry,” Bernie said, not at all penitently. He set the glass aside and began polishing the bar instead. “But it’d be hard to find two people less alike than the Getty sisters.”

  “They were both blond and blue-eyed,” Kate offered. It was a weak observation and she knew it, but some atavistic impulse of loyalty triggered by a shared childhood, and perhaps a smattering of lingering guilt leftover from her intrusion into Lottie’s grief, made her offer up what defense she could. Defense from what? she wondered then. She was thirty years old, almost thirty-one. Surely by now she had rid herself of the us-versus-them complex every Alaskan inevitably developed between we-who-were-born-here and them-who-weren’t. She studied her glass. “So Lisa was in here a lot.”

  “Three, four times a week.”

  “Always at the center of a group.”

  Bernie’s voice retreated once again into caution. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say always.”

  Not for the first time Kate cursed Bernie’s rigid standards. Bernie figured your life was your business and what you did with it the same, including alcoholism, doping, adultery—anything he regarded as a victimless crime. He didn’t care what you did as long as you weren’t hurting anyone else by your actions. He didn’t have to talk about it, either, and he wouldn’t. Kate decided she was going to have to prime the pump. “I was out to their place yesterday morning, to talk to Lottie, see if there was anything I could do.” Kate drew a circle on the bar with the bottom of her glass. “I wandered around outside afterward.” She raised her eyes. “I found a greenhouse behind their barn.”

  “Did you?” The rag paused in its lazy swipe down the scarred wood of the bar.

  “I did.” Kate put down her glass with deliberate care. “Bernie, was Lisa dealing dope?”

  Bernie looked at her with a meditative expression. A jingle of what sounded like bells came from the back room, and there was a shout of laughter from the quilting bee, laughter that sounded almost relieved, as if the quilters were happy to discover they still knew how. The pastor paused in his peroration, and the congregation bent its collective head in prayer. “We planning on mushing five hundred miles or five thousand?” Kate heard Mandy say with exasperation. “I know I said we should make it a challenge, but that doesn’t mean we should break trail for Toronto.”

  Bernie shook out the bar rag and folded it with deliberate movements. “She’s dead, Bernie,” Kate told him. “It can’t hurt her to talk about it now.”

  “That’s right,” Bernie agreed, draping the folded rag over a faucet with elaborate care. “She is dead, so what can it possibly matter now?”

  Bernie’s usually calm brown eyes could be piercingly acute on occasion, Kate discovered. “It does matter, Bernie.”

  “Why?”

  “It matters,” she repeated. “I need to know. Was Lisa Getty dealing dope?”

  The minister said “Amen,” in a voice that echoed around the bar. Amid the resulting momentary silence, he looked over at Bernie. “Coffee all around?”

  “Coming right up, Pastor Bill.” Bernie loaded a
tray with seven mugs, sugar, cream and a pot of coffee and took it over to a table near the congregation. He stood for a few moments, exchanging greetings in his usual quiet, amicable manner. The parishioners rearranged their pews around a table and Bernie poured out the coffee. After a few more words, Bernie returned to the bar. “I suppose if I asked why it matters, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Hmm.” Sam Dementieff, a grizzled old man moving slow but spry, exchanged a gruff greeting with Kate, ordered a shot and a beer and took himself off into a corner, to sit at a table alone and stare broodingly and forbiddingly at nothing in particular that Kate could see. “Okay,” Bernie said finally. Kate swiveled around to look at him. “Yes. She was dealing dope.”

  “You catch her at it?”

  He shook his head. “She was too slick for that. I don’t think anything ever changed hands in here. She knew enough not to shit in my nest, but she made plenty of trips outside.”

  “Are you sure of the reason?”

  The laugh lines at the corners of Bernie’s eyes deepened. “I don’t think even Lisa had that many guys on a string at the same time.”

  “How many?”

  He shrugged. “Depended on the night, the crowd, I imagine her supply. A dozen, two. Never stayed out more than a few minutes.”

  “She keep it stashed outside somewhere?”

  “Must have.”

  “You ever look for it?”

  “Once or twice. Never found it, though. She was good.” Bernie gave Kate a faint smile. “In more ways than one.”

  Kate looked at him, at the reminiscent quirk at the corner of his mouth, and sighed inwardly. To simplify things, she might as well assume that every man in the Park between puberty and senility had slept with Lisa Getty. And suspect every woman of murder, and thought of Enid, a funny, fiery brunette with a broad smile and broader hips and a temper that could smelt steel. “What did you hear about her as a dealer? Was it good dope? Did you get what you paid for?”

  “I never heard any complaints.”

  “Nobody looking for her with a mad-on?”

  “Not with a mad-on, no,” Bernie said and grinned at Kate’s expression.